E-invoicing Austria: ebInterface, USP and the road to the Bund

In a nutshell

Austria was one of the first EU countries with a binding B2G e-invoicing mandate, effective from 2014. Invoices to the federal level (ministries and subordinate agencies) must be electronic — with no exception based on invoice value. The legal basis is the ICT Consolidation Act and the E-Invoicing Regulation (E-RechnungVO).

For B2B there is (as of 2026) no obligation in Austria. Industry is, however, preparing for the coming EU-wide harmonisation (see EU-ViDA).

Accepted formats

The federal government accepts two core formats, depending on the submission route:

• ebInterface (currently version 6.1, XML-based) — the Austrian standard maintained by AUSTRIAPRO
• Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 (UBL) — via the Austrian Peppol Access Point network

Both formats are EN 16931-compliant. Anyone with Peppol-ready infrastructure can use the same invoice logic for the Austrian Bund as for any other EU Peppol recipient.

Not accepted: paper, PDF without embedded XML, other EDI formats without an EN 16931 mapping.

Submission routes

The Bund offers three channels:

Route	Audience	Format
USP web form	small suppliers, few invoices per year	manual entry → ebInterface
USP upload	mid-sized suppliers	ebInterface XML upload
Peppol	system integration, high volume	Peppol BIS Billing 3.0 via Access Point

The Business Service Portal (USP, usp.gv.at) is the Austrian administration’s central single sign-on. Without a USP account B2G submission does not work — portal access is free but tied to a valid UID or a verified representative.

Mandatory fields

In addition to the standard invoice fields under Austrian VAT law:

• Supplier number (if assigned by the buyer)
• Order reference (purchase order number, project code)
• Structured payment terms (IBAN, BIC)
• Buyer identifier (ministry, federal agency under the Federal Organisation Act)

On Peppol submission the recipient is addressed via its Peppol ID (typically 9915:AT-Uxxxxxxxx using the Austrian UID number).

ebInterface — the national standard

ebInterface is an XML standard maintained nationally since 2003. Key properties:

• From version 6.0 fully EN 16931-compliant
• Clearly structured sections: Invoice, Delivery, Biller, InvoiceRecipient, Details, PaymentMethod
• Extensions for Austria-specific fields (district court, commercial register number, UID)
• Transformation to UBL or CII is lossless (mapping tables are published)

For companies already producing XRechnung or Peppol UBL, the switch to ebInterface is mostly a mapping exercise — the per-invoice payload barely differs.

B2B — current status

Status end of 2025: no B2B mandate. The Ministry of Finance is watching developments in Germany and France and the EU-ViDA directive. A national B2B mandate before 2028 is considered unlikely. With ViDA (Digital Reporting Requirements from 2030) a harmonised EU rule is expected, which Austria will adopt.

Recommendation: anyone invoicing in Austria today should already be Peppol- or ebInterface-ready — if only because many public-sector buyers (states, municipalities) voluntarily prefer electronic formats and Peppol is the cleaner path.

States and municipalities

The federal E-Invoicing Regulation binds only the federal level. States and municipalities decide independently. Many large carriers (e.g. City of Vienna, State of Styria) have voluntarily enabled Peppol or ebInterface submission; some small municipalities still accept paper. A state-level mandate is politically possible but not widely in place.

Implementing with the Dokmatiq API

# Produce ebInterface 6.1
curl -X POST https://api.dokmatiq.com/v1/einvoice/ebinterface \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DOKMATIQ_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "version": "6.1",
    "invoice": {
      "id": "2026-AT-0042",
      "issueDate": "2026-04-18",
      "biller": { "name": "Example GmbH", "vatId": "ATU12345678" },
      "invoiceRecipient": { "name": "Bundesministerium für …", "orderReference": "BMF-2026-007" },
      "lines": [{ "description": "Consulting", "quantity": 8, "unitPrice": 120.0 }]
    }
  }' \
  -o invoice.xml

# Alternatively: Peppol BIS for the Austrian AP
curl -X POST https://api.dokmatiq.com/v1/einvoice/peppol \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DOKMATIQ_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "customizationId": "urn:fdc:peppol.eu:2017:poacc:billing:3.0",
    "receiverEndpoint": { "scheme": "9915", "id": "AT-U12345678" },
    "invoice": { ... }
  }'

With outputProfile: "PDF/A-3b" the same data can produce an archive-grade PDF for your own bookkeeping — not for submission (which must be pure XML).

Common pitfalls

1. Missing order reference — the Bund automatically rejects invoices without an OrderReference
2. USP access not set up — without USP registration, Peppol submission to the Austrian Bund does not work
3. UID instead of IBAN in the payment block — ebInterface requires structured bank details with IBAN/BIC
4. Legacy versions — ebInterface versions below 6.0 are not EN 16931-compliant and will be phased out; new implementations should start directly with 6.1